


Nameless

by bramblePatch



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Memories of Past Lives, Names, Pale Romance, Paradox Angst, the anachronistic tragedy that is the Handmaid's life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-05
Updated: 2013-06-05
Packaged: 2017-12-14 00:37:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/830677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bramblePatch/pseuds/bramblePatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future." -Oscar Wilde</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nameless

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for Bonus Round 1 of the 2013 Homestuck Shipping World Cup

If there is some omniscient intelligence to Paradox Space, it has a sense of humor, and it doesn't seem to like you very much.

In the life you lived in your dreams, you didn't even _like_ Damara Megido. Oh, you wouldn't have admitted it, because you were a sanctimonious little twit and it wouldn't do for you to be seen to _dislike_ a troll as _disadvantaged_ as she, but she was brash and crude and uncommunicative and you had not liked her.

In this life, you've lost that self-important sneer as a matter of survival, and she's streaked through history like a piece of burning magnesium and you are honestly not sure you _want_ to meet her. You're certain it's her - you've seen good likenesses in paintings and etchings and even, once when you were very young, carved into a cave wall by some forgotten troll who no doubt died long before Her Imperious Condescension ( _Meenah_ ) rose to power. It would be too great a coincidence for it to be some other angular, curly-horned woman who has been drawn into matters far too big for any troll to by rights be part of. She even wears her hair in almost the same way.

Sometimes the younger memebers of your company begin to tell tales of the Demoness around the fire, and you quietly excuse yourself when the stories start to take a turn for the ribald. You can't quite justify telling them to stop - knowing what you do of the Demoness's former existence, you suspect she might even approve - but it still makes you uncomfortable.

\---

Every generation of Alternian trolls that has ever been hatched has been fed stories of _you_ nearly from the cocoon, and you were reared on stories of _him_.

Maybe that's why you are afraid to approach him.

\---

Twilight is brief this time of sweep, and likewise, dawn. Color has just started to touch the horizon this morning, and somewhere not far off, you can hear Ψiioniic Twicelit ( _Mituna_ ) driving stragglers into their tents with loud, enthusiastic, and almost entirely untrue accounts of the horrors of sunsickness.

"Did you know if you get dehydrated enough, your bulge falls right off?"

"I heard of a guy who spent half an hour in the sun and spent the very short remainder of his life totally convinced that he was a trained cholerbear."

"Yeah, I know our dear sweet Dolorosa goes out in the sun all the time, that's because she's a very special kind of freaky."

You smile to yourself. Some things don't change much. You wish you'd been closer to him in the version of events that didn't involve hiding in the badlands like hunted animals.

He comes around the corner of a cluster of tents and sighs heavily as he spots you. "Dude, you keep wandering around out here all morning and you are going to _completely_ blow my credibility with those guys."

"I'll be inside by sunup," you promise him. "I think I saw something over that way, I'm going to go check it out."

He frowns. "You want me to come?"

You flash him a reassuring smile, and toss and catch a sickle in one hand. "I'll be fine," you say. "Don't worry about me, Mituna."

You feel just a little guilty about dropping the wriggling name you shouldn't know, but it works. He stares at you for a moment, unreadable behind mismatched eyes, and then shrugs and turns to go.

\---

You don't approach him, but when you have a few moments when Scratch is content to pretend he doesn't notice you're gone, sometimes you hang around the edges of his life.

It's not very long, as lives go. No one you like seems to last long.

\---

You half-expect her to be gone by the time you make it up the scrubby hill to where you think you saw her; you've thought you'd seen her before, and she was always gone by the time you reached her. 

This time, though, for whatever reason, she's there waiting when you get there. And it's undoubtedly her. The Demoness. The Handmaid of Death. ( _Damara_.)

Maybe waiting isn't quite the right word. She's sitting on the ground with her back against a large boulder, staring into the middle distance. You think. It's hard to tell - those eyes are definitely new, this time around. At any rate, she doesn't turn to look at you as you approach.

You put away your sickle - against the likes of her, it's a laugable gesture at best, and she doesn't seem hostile. And then, without really knowing why, you sit down, beside her, just out of arm's reach.

You don't have all day - your cloak provides some protection, but before long the sun will breach the horizon and then you will have to hurry back to camp before the heat and light become unbearable. You do have a bit of time, though, enough to wait to see if she'll make the first move. Damara was always a little hard to approach, even before Meenah decided to systematically ruin her life as a team-building exercise. And your patience is rewarded; she glances over at you, wary and feral, but still - not hostile.

"What do you want, Sufferer." Her voice is flat, and oddly accented.

"Haven't heard that one before," you say lightly, although the ominous, unfamiliar epithet does concern you more than you'd like to admit.

"Oh." She blinks at you, slow. "Sorry. You're young. Signless."

"That's the more usual one," you agree. "What can I call you?"

The woman looks away. "Whatever you like."

"It's just that I think I know your name, but some of the others don't like me to use their wriggling names so if you'd prefer I use your title instead -"

"I don't have a wriggling name," she interrupts, her voice guarded, but a little... hopeful?

"Damara?"

She stares at you, her gaze uncomprehending, quickly shading to troubled. "Was that, before...? I don't. I _don't have_ a name."

You're hardly aware of rising to your knees, shifting closer to her. "It's ok, I don't have to call you that," you say, gentling her; in what is probably the stupidest risk you've taken all sweep, you lay a hand carefully on her arm. She, amazingly, doesn't take it off at the wrist. "Demoness, then?"

The Demoness (she's _Damara_ , no matter what she's able to accept from you) nods, a little shakily, and after a long moment, you pull back.

"You should go," she says. "It's nearly light. Your friends will wonder where you are."

"I - yeah, I guess." You can't argue with that, but you want so badly to know who she is now, what she knows, how she's become what she is. 

Maybe a little of that desperate desire to know shows on your face, because she quirks a tiny crooked smile at you, and this time it's her turn to lean over and catch you hand. Her movements are at once hesitant and precise, as if she's not sure she's doing it right but wants to.

"I'll come back," she says. "Another time. You'll see me again, more than once before you are Sufferer."

\---

That's a promise you keep.


End file.
